Sweeping Up The Ashes
by Lady Galilea
Summary: A collection of somewhat-interlocking one-shots about various character's lives after the end of the Second Wizarding War. Rated T because I'm really, really paranoid.
1. Bellatrix

**Hey there. **

**This collection is set in a world where Bellatrix Lestrange and her husband survived. Everything else, however, is just the way JKR left it. **

**Speaking of which, I am not JKR and I never will be. She owns everything. I'm just playing with some of her creations.**

It's cold at night. It's especially cold in the dark corners of the Leaky Cauldron, and it's especially cold for Bellatrix Lestrange. She shivers, rubs her arms in her thin purple robes, wishes she had worn something warmer. Then again, after fourteen years in Azkaban, its hard for her to ever feel anything but cold. She wants to go home, but she isn't exactly sure where home is. She lives with her Dolphy in a tiny flat in Diagon Alley, but that's not home. She isn't sure, but Bellatrix thinks that she lost her home a long time ago.

Bellatrix looks around, at the clock, at the copy of the _Daily Prophet_ in front of her, at the dirty windows. Time sees to drag on, and yet at the same time fly past Bellatrix before she can acknowledge it. For Bellatrix, every second is a 'thank you' and a 'goodbye'. One more moment alive, one more moment here, one moment less, one moment farther. It's ten o'clock. Her shift ends at midnight, but she could leave now if she really wanted. No one comes at night. She thinks that might be why she is always given this shift to work. The court, right after they decided that she was 'menatally unstable', decided that she and Dolphy needed to forfeit every piece of gold the owned, sell their manor, and start again. It wasn't too bad, Bellatrix thinks to herself. The flat the Ministry gave them is small, but surprisingly cozy. A bedroom, a bathroom, and a minuscule kitchen. Their old home had a million rooms and a million ways to be lost. In their new home, they were always together. After Azkaban, they swore that they would never be alone like that again.

Its been good, their new beginning, but hard in ways that Bellatrix would never imagine. Walking down the street, feeling those coldcold eyes on her, feeling like she was drowning, like Azkaban, the coldcold eyes of people who didn't know her. Icy cold looks that burn holes in Bellatrix's heart. Maybe they are right, Bellatrix thinks.

Half an hour has passed. In an hour and half, she will go home to Dolphy. He gets home late, too, from his new job working in the ministry, in the Department of Magical Games and Sports. Bellatrix smiles when she thinks of the love of her life. The ministry gave him a low-level job-after all, who would trust an evil, terrible death-eater with an important job in the ministry- but he makes enough and slowly, slowly, is gaining trust back.

Trust is an important word, according to Healer Kane, Emma, Bellatrix's therapist at St. Mungo's. That was another court-order- Bellatrix must go to see a therapist twice a week. "Trust people. Put yourself in their shoes." That was Emma's mantra. Trust. Trust. Trust. Trust. The word beats in time with Bellatrix's heart as she scans the _Daily Prophet_. Trust. Trust. Trust.

"Excuse me, Ms. Lestrange, can I get a butterbeer?"

Bellatrix looks up from her reading. Trust. Trust. Trust. A slender girl with red hair and sad eyes stands in front of the counter. Her face is kind. No dirty looks. No anger. No judging. Trust. Trust. Trust.

"Sure, Ms. Weasley. Sit where you want."

_So, what did you think? _

_Tell me in a review or a PM or both, I'm not fussy. _


	2. Ginny

**Hey all, this is from Ginny's POV, with lots of Bellatrix and a touch of Belladolphus. I know I promised one shots, and these are...just interlocking one shots...**

Ginny isn't quite sure why she Apparated out of the house on a cold January night. She's even less sure why she goes to the Leaky Cauldron. There's no one else there. At first, Ginny isn't even sure its open. She turns slowly. A women stands in the shadows behind the bar, reading the _Daily Prophet_. Her face is thin and pale, and dark eyes filled with sadness seem to take up her entire face. Thick curls of black hair, streaked here and there with gray. Purple robes draped over a small, frail body. Ginny knows who this is. She knows that she was not sent back to Azkaban with her husband, because she was proven to be crazy. But somehow, the broken woman in front of her does not seem to be the same person that she dueled with eight months before. The fire is gone from her eyes, and the manic anger gone from her face. If anything, the woman in front of Ginny just looks sad.

" Excuse me, Ms. Lestrange, can I get a butterbeer?" Ginny keeps her voice soft and quiet.

When Bellatrix looks up, her face is full of surprise, and then gratitude. Ginny can see that it has been a long time since someone has been kind, or at least civil, to Bellatrix Lestrange.

"Sure. Ms. Weasley. Sit where you want." Bellatrix's voice is slightly hoarse, but there is none of the mocking anger Ginny remembers it having. Maybe she's changed. It would make sense, Ginny thinks. So much else has changed. She herself is not the same girl she was less than a year before.

Ginny smiles a little, and sits down at the bar.

The clock in the corner ticks the time by. It's quiet. Too quiet, in a way that makes Ginny's head hurt and her ears hurt and her heart hurt most of all. Before the war, before everything, her home would never be this quiet. Now, it almost always is. Without Fred, George is quiet and moody, and wanders, as if lost, around the home he grew up in. Ginny's mother, too, is strangely quiet. Its as if the words in her died along with her son that fateful night in May. Her other brothers are never in the house now. They hate the silence as much as Ginny, but they have other places to go. Ginny decides to break the silence.

"Your robes are lovely, Ms. Lestrange." Ginny actually means this. The robes are a deep, rich purple that reminds her of her room at Hogwarts.

"Thank you." A small smile just manages to play around Bellatrix's full lips. "They are some of the only things that we where allowed to keep. Not that I'm ungrateful, for the chance to start again is wonderful, but it is very hard…" Her voice trailed off, and she looks into the distance, her eyes even sadder.

Ginny is not sure what to say to that. Bellatrix surprises her by being the first to speak again. Her hands draw patterns on the worn wood counter as she speaks.

" I did things I regret. Everyone thinks that Bellatrix Lestrange doesn't have a heart, has no regrets, is just a cold, crazy, sadistic murderer. " Bellatrix laughs, a hard, bitter sound with no joy. " How wrong they are. I regret more than anything. But I made a choice that I thought would last forever. But then I didn't. Funny, how when you need to start over everything seems to be dragging you back to the past."

Bellatrix turns, waves her wand, and a glass filled with butterbeer soars through the air toward her. She hands it to Ginny.

"So you regret what you did?" Ginny immedietly regrets her question. She expects Bellatrix's rage, insults, and curses. She is shocked when she sees tears falling slowly down Bellatrix's face.

"I do. " Bellatrix says quietly. " I do." The tears fall faster, and she lets out a small sob.

Ginny bites her lip. This was not what she expected. She looks at the clock. To her surprise, an hour has passed.

"Look, Ms. Lestrange, Bellatrix, I'll take you to your husband, OK? Don't cry. Please don't cry though." Ginny does not know what to say, only that she has seen too many tears recently.

Bellatrix just shakes her head, burying her head in her hands.

"Bella? Are you OK?" Ginny turns. Relief washes over her. A tall man with thick brown hair has just Apparated in. He quickly crosses the space between him and Bellatrix and wraps his arms around her. Bellatrix quiets in his arms, and Ginny slips out, unnoticed.

Things truly are not like they were a year before, Ginnny thinks to herself as she enters Diagon Alley. She has never been at night. She could just apparate home, but suddenly she has no intention of returning to her cold quiet home. Her pace quickens as she walks, quickly, down the dark streets. Her mind turns to Harry. The boy who lived, who became the man she loves. He's away. Ginny can't go see him now. As she walks, Ginny does not notice the slim figure in front of her.

With a yell, she collides with a certain Draco Malfoy.

_I know there was not a lot of pure Ginny here, but there will be more in the Draco Malfoy chapter. Also, I had to put a few things in about Bellatrix. Actually, who am I kidding? I just love Bellatrix and making her fragile and sad and regretful. So yeah. But bear with me here and shoot me review or a PM, because as the Beatles put it, all you need is love. And Reviews = Love. _


	3. Draco

**Hey, everyone. This chapter's pretty short, but I liked it this way...**

**Any ideas toward other people? I think I'll do seven of these, so there are four left...**

**Anyway, read, review, you know the drill!**

**Oh, and as always: I'm not JKR, and as much as I wish I will wake up one day and be the most talented witch of our age, I never will.**

Draco can't say why he felt the need to stroll through Diagon Alley, in January, just before midnight, but one way or another, that's where he ends up. His blonde hair doesn't retain any of that silky smoothness that it used to have-rather, it is courser, wavier, and hangs down to below his chin. His mother thinks that hi haircut is 'outrageous'. Draco thinks that might be why he leaves it that way. He used to love being a Malfoy. The power, the respect, the influence, the name had, at least in some circles. But since the way, Draco is not sure whether its pride or shame that he associates with his surname. At first, the idea of following in his father's footsteps was exciting, filled with thrill. Then, it became a nightmare, where everything got set on fire and burned and nothing was left of the life that Draco knew. And now, here he is. The ashes are being swept up- the ashes of a life, the ashes of love, and the ashes of pain. At home, Draco's mother cries at night and pretends that everything is fine during the day. Draco's father is in Azkaban again, serving five years. Draco thought he would mind so much, that it would kill him to see his father in Azkaban again. It doesn't.

Guilt pulls at Draco- it is his father, after all, and yet he did terrible things, things that Draco would never, ever think about. So maybe that's why he Apparates to Diagon Alley almost at midnight on a cold night in January. He's so sick of the pretending- to care, not to care, balancing feelings with reputations and love with respect.

"Are you alright?" Draco looks down, surprised. Someone has just bumped into him.

"Oh, err, yes," a red-headed girl a little younger than Draco is getting to her feet, a bit unsteadily.

"Here." Draco reaches down, grabs her hand, and easily pulls her to her feet.

"Draco?" She looks up into his gray eyes, recognition flickering across her pale, freckled face.

"Ginny," Draco responds, ducking his head in her direction. "Are you OK?"

Ginny nods.

There is an awkward silence. The wind howls around the rooftops of Diagon Alley. The moon slips out from behind a cloud and bathes the teenagers in silver light. Draco looks at her, really looks at her. All those years of calling her 'Weasley', insulting her, mocking her….Draco feels them like blows to his heart now. More than anything since the war, he wishes that he had been kinder to her.

"Well, I'll, erm, see you around then," Ginny said, after a moment.

"Oh, right, yeah," Draco shook his head, flustered. The moon is behind a cloud, and its too dark, too quiet. Ginny's blue eyes meet Draco's for one short second, before she turns on her heel and Disaparates.

Draco stands there, alone, for a moment longer before he, too, Dissaparates with a soft "_crack". _

_Hola, people. Tell me your thoughts on this...please?_

_All ya need is love. And love=reviews. So be kind and give me the one thing that I need. :) _

_(Not to guilt-trip you or anything...) :D_


	4. Minerva

**Hey, all of you amazing people out there who are reading this::**

**I'm so, so, so sorry for taking...a month...(*gulp*)...to update this, but I had an advance illness known as 'Writer's Block'. **

**I'm not really sure what I think about this. I'm not too much of fan...I was interested in Minerva from the beginning because she is so, amazingly strong, and such a great person, but also so controlled and disciplined, and I came from those ideas when I started writing, but I'm not sure I really managed to come across with what I wanted. **

**But hey, I want to know what you think, and I AM TAKING REQUESTS for the next three chapters. I mean, I may not do them if I can't connect, but I would love some feedback (mind you, I would *always* appreciate feedback :D) on what ideas you might have, and how you might see the post-war Harry Potter world. **

**As usual: I am not JKR, nor am I a thief, and therefor I own nothing. **

**Enjoy! :)**

She had never thought that while rebuilding, she would be breaking things down.

Since the war, Minerva McGonagall has been repairing, fixing, healing. Mending hearts and bricks, stepping up to lead a place that was known for its safety after so many died there. But slowly, things have been falling apart; even as she gently picks up the remains of so many people's lives and helps them put it back together.

Minerva has worked for so long to separate all parts of her life, keeping things boxed off in her mind and in her heart. Her work, a love of sorts, occupied one section, and her family, her life outside of Hogwarts, was in another. But somehow, in the aftermath of war, as the dust and ashes settled and where swept aside, it seemed that dust had been brushed off her memories, and the walls she had so carefully built up where falling down.

Minerva had not thought of love for many years now. Almost nineteen years before, the man she thought she would spend forever with was torn away from her by the man known as the one of the darkest wizards ever. It had shattered her heart, but Minerva made herself be strong. She let her sadness, her hate, her pain guide her power, and bring out her strength, but never had she let her self mourn.

Until now.

Somehow, as she attends funerals and memorials, places flowers on graves of children that she has seen grow so much, as she helps families mourn their losses and helped them begin to heal after they were torn apart by loss, she lets her walls come down.

" Another gilly water, Minerva?"

Madame Rosmarta, cheery as ever in her sparkling turquoise heels and cascading blond waves pinned up onto her hair, jerks Minerva out of her thoughts.

"Oh, yes, thanks, Rosmarta," says Minerva distractedly, passing the other women a few coins.

" How are things at Hogwarts?" Rosmarta pushes the sleeves of her purple robes up as she waves her wand, the drink in front of her fizzing and then slowly turning a soft shade of blue.

"They're…they're, coping," Minerva says finally.

" That's all you can ask for, I suppose." Rosmarta's back is to Minerva.

Minerva wants to tell Rosmarta everything, and let it all out finally. After two decades, she is letting her love and sadness into her heart. She is letting her life be free, no longer governed by the strict rules that she has imposed on her self. She takes a deep breath. It is so different than who she was even a year ago, if she said anything. Before, she would not even let herself think of anything that she has just been thinking of. She would not let herself consider them. But now….now everything is different. Wars leave different scars on different people, and for Minerva, the war has picked off the scabs that she has layered over the wounds in her heart, not letting them heal, but not managing to vanquish them completely. So as she sits in the Three Broomsticks months after the war, Minerva feels her raw, tender heart beating in her chest, and for the first time in three quarters of her life, she allows herself to open up.

"Hogwarts is coping, Rosmarta, but let me tell you something about me…."

_So, guys, whad'ja think?_

_I am not quite sure what I think of this myself, so I would lovelovelovelovelovelove to hear what you think. Maybe you think that writing a review doesn't matter, maybe you hate my writing and you think its a waste of time, but just know: Every review makes me happier than you can ever imagine. You are giving me so much just by typing in a scant few words, just telling me what you think. If you have a heart, (Not to guilt trip you or anything...heeeheee...) write a review. _

_Reviews=Love_


	5. Narcissa

**Hey all. **

**I'm back after way too long, I know. But my muse ran away and was in a theatre troupe in New Zealend, and I only just found him again. I hope he stays.**

**Anyway, I really like this chapter, so I hope you won't kill me for disappearing ( I was hunting down my muse! I swear! I have an excuse! *pleads* *grovels*) and then coming back after so long with such a short chapter. **

**Well, just read it. Please. **

**As usual: I don't own anything. If I owned it, why would I be posting this stuff on a fanfiction site? Hmmm?**

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Narcissa stares across the Hog's Head, a mixture of sadness and happiness and something else that tastes sweet and sad in her mouth and smells like the garden in the summer when they were children, whirls through her like the gently swirling, shimmery white surface if the gillywater clutched in her pale hand.

There's Minerva, across the room, talking to Rosmarta, playing the heroes, the golden girls. And here's Narcissa, in the corner. She's so sick of it, really. Once upon a time, back in another life, she was everything that she wanted to be, and that was the top of society, the respected, the beautiful. And then the war came, and burned through everything she knew. And then she was in the dirt, and the villain, and was everything she feared.

Narcissa is no stranger to being left behind, forgotten for the next big thing. Once upon a time, Andy was too far ahead of them to be competition, and Bella was the one that their parents were always angry at, and Cissa was the lovely blond angel. But then Bella became Bellatrix, and Andy was blasted off the tapestry, and Bellatrix was beautiful and wonderful and brave suddenly, and just as fast, Cissa was Narcissa, the naïve, irritating kid sister.

So it bothers Narcissa that she was forgotten again, just when she though that she had made in the world out of her sister's shadows. Of course, shadows were Bella's domain, and one could never fully get out of them. And it seemed that she was still stuck in the tar-sticky mess. Lucius was in jail, moldering in Azkaban, and it seems like Draco has turned away from her completely.

And so, Narcissa Black, belle of the ball, beauty queen, princess, sits in the corner booth of the pub and nurses a gillyweed that tastes like nostaligia.

" 'Evening, Narcissa. "

When Narcissa hears the voice, she thinks that maybe her memory has conjured it up, and that maybe she going mad. Because there is no rational explanation. She hasen't heard that voice, that tone, the way it slides gently over the hiss in her name in over twenty years.

But reality and rationality are fickle beasts, and Narcissa raises her eyes from her glass and stares into the liquid eyes of her older sister Andromeda.

Narcissa thinks of a million trillion thousand things she should tell her sister, on their first meeting in so long.

But the grandeur, the pomp, and the declarations planned out on sleepless nights and raised lovingly in a nest of remorse and second guessing due on Narcissa's tongue. They all are so fake, so clichéd, so see-through in their attempts of profoundness. Instead, all Narcissa can comment on is the weather.

"Miserable weather we're having, isn't it?" Her voice flows with careful lightness that someone less than a sister would swallow happily.

Narcissa knows from Andromeda's slow, quiet gaze that she, at least, reads between, and see's the panic behind Narcissa's deliberate exterior.

After all, they are sisters. Raised, together, to be china dolls, hard, shiny, porcelain. And raised to see the hairline cracks in the surface of a substance so perfect it must be flawed.

"Tell me." Andromeda sits down opposite Narcissa.

Narcissa sees the cracks in Andromeda, and she sees the places that the cracks have healed and made her stronger. Andromeda isn't a china doll anymore. She's real.

So Narcissa begins to tell her.

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_Hola-_

_So? How was it? Hate it? Love it? Think it was a waste of your time? Hope I burn in hell? _

_Lemme know in a ... (drumroll please) review!_

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	6. Luna

**Short n' Sweet, and I'm finally done. **

**IDK what I think about this chapter. I like it . . . and then I don't.**

**Eh, well, I've ignored this for so, so long, I just need to post this. **

**Disclaimer: Neville and Luna belong to JKR. "I Will Always Love You" belongs to Whitney Houston. My ****_cat_**** belongs to me ...? (not that she's mentioned...)**

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Luna doesn't brush her hair much, really. Her mum used to brush her hair a lot, and she did like it, but Daddy never did, and she got into the habit of not. And no one really cared, because the people that bothered about brushing their hair much bothered about not talking to Loony Lovegood, and the people she did spend time with didn't care.

But today, Luna is brushing her hair. The brush smells like innocence and her mum's old perfume, and while the brush's light pink paint of flaking away, and the bristles are bent, and it's really much to small for a nineteen-year-old hand, Luna can't bring herself to throw it out. Mum used the brush, Luna thinks to herself. And maybe its just Nargles in her brain, but Luna feels that maybe, just maybe, some of mum's magic is left on the brush.

One, two, three strokes. Pause for a knot, go slow, don't pull too hard. Luna hears her mum's voice, feels the yellow robe she wore before bed, smells her sweet honey perfume and lets her soft hands brush Luna's. She's here but she isn't, and that's ok with Luna.

Luna sets down her brush, and glances at her reflection in the mirror. Another first. She usually doesn't care much what she looks like, but if she brushed, she might as well check, she thinks to herself.

Yellow hair, pale cheeks, bright shining eyes that gleam like deep pools, roseblood lips. Luna's face stares back at her, and she brushes hair out her face. What does everyone else see? Same face, same clothes. How do people know who she is? Hardly anyone does. Loony Lovegood to her face, and Loony Lovegood behind her, the two groups of people that she sorts her life into. And then there is Him.

The boy that sees the Yellow hair and the roseblood lips and the dark shining eyes, and sees through them to who she is in her veiny, bloody, gutsy insides. Neville. His name rolls off of Luna's tongue like she's meant to say it, and she agrees that she might be.

Luna looks back at herself, and slips a pink, float-y gown over her body. It kisses her skin with a soft, dry touch, and swishes around her feet like a mini, chartreuse ocean.

Luna leaves her house, as the wind sings a ballad by her window.

A song plays on the muggle radio that Neville once gave her and a static-y voice croons out audio love to 2 million listeners worldwide. " I will always looooooove you," the voice sings.

Luna switches off the radio, and leaves the house. While there may not be a couple million to hear her tonight (in fact, there will only be one), she too has some love to confess to.

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	7. Dolores

**Last chapter! W00t, W00t! **

**Thanks to y'all that stuck with me, through my...disappearances...? *ducks from flying objects***

**Anyway, love y'all to bits. **

**Disclaimer: I own nothing. 'Nuff said.**

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"Next."

The witches voice is flat, bored, and it marches down the line between disinterested and condescending. It matches perfectly with it's surroundings, the waiting room at the Ministry's Department of Development hiring office.

Dolores Umbridge gets up as fast as possible from the cheaply made, plastic chair. _Obviously a muggle product,_ thinks Dolores contemptuously, wincing as her pink skirt peels away from the sweaty, vinyl seat with a nasty squelching sound.

Dolores adjusts her black velvet bow with as much dignity as she can muster, and steps up to the desk.

"Name?" The witch's nametag reads 'Jenina'. Her hair is messily swept back- young people, these days, thinks Dolores, frowning at Jenina's unkempt looks- and she wears loose, light blue robes.

"Dolores Jane Umbridge," she says haughtily, or as haughtily as she can be, given the situation.

"Do you have an appointment?" Jenina picks at her nails, which are painted a blinding shade of orange, and doodles on the daybook. She has places to go, people to see. Now is just a beginning, a steppingstone, a means to the end. Dolores feels a twinge of jealousy. She remembers when she had her whole life ahead of her; it was a long time ago indeed.

"Alright. Go ahead. Third door on the left, then take a right and you've got the room."

Dolores smiles coldly at Jenina- it is in her nature, after all, to get her way through a twisted sort of kindness- but inside, her blood boils and freezes and her mind is blurred with anger. How many times had she been on the other side of the desk- interviewing for one low-level job or another, simpering at the miserable filth that came groveling, bowing and scraping to get some miserable position.

And now it is she, bowing and scraping and groveling.

The thought makes her stop in her tracks. A lesser woman, perhaps, would have cried.

But no Dolores Umbridge. If she had cried, she would not have had what she had.

And she _will_ have it all again.

She swears it to herself in the corridor of the Ministry's hiring office, as the peeling paint and chipped finish on the floor bear witness.

For when other's cry, Dolores plans for revenge.

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_(please?)_

_(All around Reviews of the Story would be much appreciated, in addition to feedback on this last chapter.)_


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